


Birth of a Legacy

by chronicAngel



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Dancing, DickBabs Week 2018, Domestic, F/M, POV Third Person, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-16 03:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: She doesn't suspect anything at first.





	Birth of a Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> This is about three weeks late, but I'm going to get all of the prompts out and I'm going to do it at the pace that I'm able to. I swear, though, eventually all of DickBabs Week 2018 will be filled!

She doesn't suspect anything at first.

She doesn't have any of the symptoms she's usually heard of. She misses her period for the first month, but she assumes that it's because she switched birth controls (and she _knew_ they should have waited a few days after she started it, but they didn't and that's on them). She doesn't feel nauseous at all, and she has minor cramps but blames it on her newly messed up cycle.

It's only caught at all because she goes to see Leslie with the rest of the family sans Jason after Doctor Death releases an airborne virus upon Gotham City.

"I got the all clear!" Steph announces as she steps out, exchanging a high five with Cass, who was told she was good to go half an hour ago. "Barbara, she wants you to head on back next." It makes her the third to go back. She will shortly come to wish that she had been the last.

Leslie takes her blood and is out of the room for the next twenty minutes while she waits for the results of the test, and Barbara has to stew in boredom by herself. She understands that they don't want to risk anyone else being in the room in case she is sick so that it doesn't have the opportunity to spread in the space of the small room, but she still wishes that she were allowed to have Dick or Cass or Stephanie back here with her. _Hell, I'd take Bruce_.

When the doctor finally comes back, she is wearing an expression that she thinks looks anxious. "What? Am I sick? I'm sick, aren't I? Figures that the only one who doesn't go out and patrol anymore is the one who has to catch the virus..." She trails off when Leslie doesn't respond and she realizes that she's rambling. "Well, we'll work out a cure and get through it. No virus is gonna stop me--"

"You're not sick, Barbara," Leslie finally cuts her off, pinching at the bridge of her nose. "The both of you are going to be fine." _The both of us?_ She furrows her brows. Stephanie is fine, but referring to the two of them as a unit doesn't make sense. Not if she isn't also roping Cass in. _Besides, Steph's health is hardly related to mine. The virus may be airborne, but she was just given the all clear. It'd only be affecting my body_.

She freezes. _My body..._ She looks at Leslie with wide eyes and suddenly understands her nerves. "How? I'm not... I haven't been nauseous or anything. And I'm on birth control!" _Birth control fails all of the time. Some women don't show many symptoms_ , she thinks even before Leslie says it aloud. Her mother used to tell her how she was such an easy pregnancy. The worst thing she ever had to deal with was sore feet and a sore back because of how long she would have to stand during the day. "When?" She asks, even as she already knows.

"It's hard to say exactly. Between six and eight weeks." _Seven_ , she thinks. She switched seven weeks ago. _I've been pregnant for seven weeks and I didn't even know._ "You should stop taking your birth control immediately. No study says it's exactly _bad_ for your baby, but as a safety precaution we try to advise against it. And see your regular doctor as soon as you can." She nods, her head spinning, and then moves to leave the small examination room. Steph and Cass have left the waiting room by the time she gets back, presumably to go help Jason catch Doctor Death while the rest of them get checked out.

Dick sends her a smile she supposes is meant to be reassuring as he is called back to be tested next, which must mean she looks nervous.  _I need to be by myself. I need to think._ She realizes that unless she goes back to the Clocktower, she is going to be stuck here waiting on everyone's results for hours. Tim seems to have already had this realization, feet pulled up onto the chair and knees pulled against his chest, forehead resting on them while he dozes off. Bruce and Damian apparently have not, as they still sit there waiting rather than going back out and stubbornly grunting that they'll be back for the check-up once the problem is fixed.

"Bruce. Can you tell Dick to call me when he gets out? I'm going to head back to the Clocktower and see if I can't help Jason and the girls." He snorts what she thinks is an affirmative and she doesn't wait any longer to wheel herself out of the clinic.

* * *

She hears gunshots the second she has reconnected to the comm links and she guesses that must mean that Jason and the girls have found Doctor Death in the time it's taken her to get back home. "Red Hood, can you hear me?" He yells something that sounds like a _yes_ over the gunshots and she rolls her eyes. "Don't kill him. We need him alive to find out if this thing is deadly and to get a formula for a vaccine. If we're lucky, he'll already have one."

"Spoilsport. I can still hurt him real bad though, right?"

"...Yeah, I guess you can hurt him real bad."

She can hear the grin on his voice when he yells, "We've got Oracle's permission to kick his ass!" She's able to get into a security camera feed nearby shortly, and she advises the three of them through their earpieces for the next hour on how to properly fight him before they finally take him down. Jason snaps one of the bones in his wrist and it pierces through the skin, too thick for a normal human, and it's the agony of his bone trying to stitch itself back together that ultimately makes him drop to his knees, no more fight left in him. "We'll call the police so they can take you to the hospital once you tell us how to fix this." He says, leaning in close to Doctor Death's face. Steph and Cass linger in the background with their arms crossed, two silent threats.

Doctor Death howls that there is no antidote, and that those who are infected will either die or their bodies will fight the virus naturally, like any old case of pneumonia or the flu. "Except it's like a... a super pneumonia! Or a super flu! It'll be harder to fight." If what he's saying is the truth, that means that the virus _is_ deadly, but it's also treatable. They just need to get Wayne Enterprises' scientists to start working on a medication for it right now.

She immediately gets started drafting an email to Lucius from Bruce's email, hoping that he'll see it in time before people start dropping. "Hood, call the cops and get out of there. Check out his place. We've got what we need from him. Batgirl, Black Bat, you two stay with him. Make sure he doesn't try anything."

With that, she closes the comms. It's about here that she realizes that Dick hasn't called her.

"Barbara." It's Bruce who answers even as she called Dick's phone, and his voice sounds even more somber than it usually does. _That can't bode well. One of them is sick._ She wants to hope that it is Bruce or Tim or even Damian, but in truth can't wish it on any of them. (In truth, she already knows who it is going to be.) "Dick tested positive for the virus. He's currently quarantined in the Batcave until a treatment can be worked out." _Of course_ , she thinks. _Of course he'd be sick with a potentially fatal virus now of all times. When else would he be?_

"The girls are with Doctor Death while Red Hood checks out his house for any sample of the virus or some sort of formula that we might be able to have scientists at Wayne Enterprises study. I emailed Lucius to let him know that we need to get your people on this. I'll be over in 25." She doesn't wait for a response before she hangs up. It is actually only twenty minutes before she pulls up to Wayne Manor, frantically pushing herself up into the mansion proper and then down to the cave.

Dick is laying on a bed behind a glass wall, and she has no idea where it came from. She's never seen it in the cave before. Damian is sitting on the other side of the glass, back pressed to the wall, rubbing at his arm absentmindedly. Tim leans with his arms crossed against one of the nearby walls, natural and stone, while Bruce sits far away at the giant computer with his face buried in his hands. Though it is not a late hour for any of them, they all look exhausted.

She sighs and pushes herself up to the glass, and as though sensing her presence, Dick rolls over to lay on his other side, and then his eyes catch on her. "Babs!" He shoots to be sitting up, though he doesn't actually get out of the bed. She wants to press her hand to the glass simply for the illusion of being closer to him, but she is positive it would be too dangerous to do so. _Not now. Not with the baby_. "What are you doing here? You should be at the Clocktower or you might get sick. I'm not coughing or sneezing or anything yet, but the second I start those germs will be all over the glass and--"

"You were supposed to call me," she breathes, so quiet he shouldn't be able to hear it. From the way his face falls, he does anyway.

"B took my phone," he says, brows furrowed. He looks guilty. "I'm sorry."

She feels on the verge of tears and she chooses to blame pregnancy for it. "We got Doctor Death. He's with the girls. He said that your immune system could potentially fight off the virus on its own. Jason's investigating his place now for anything that might already be there, just in case. You're gonna get over this."  _Because you have to meet your child._ He does not look like he doubts her at all, and she wants to cry because he's more confident in her than she is right now.

They all sit around in silence for the next two hours, waiting for someone to come and update them on the situation. Dick goes back to laying down until he eventually passes out, Bruce eventually shuffles over to join them, and Tim slides down the wall to sit cross-legged on the floor. She spends every agonizing second forcing herself not to tell him right there and then that she is pregnant because she does not want him to find out about his first child under these circumstances.

"I got a sample!" Jason announces, bursting through the door. Despite his words, he is empty-handed, and she glares at him. "Well, I gave it to the guys from Wayne Labs. There wasn't exactly a bottle labeled 'VACCINE HERE', but there was a sample of the liquid state of what would eventually become the gas used to transmit the virus."

He stops talking when he sees everyone, slumped in exhaustion and worry. "What?" Evidently, he spots Dick in bed behind glass next, as he rushes over without another word. "Shit. You can't be dying. Dying is my thing."

"He's not going to die," she and Damian snap at the same time.

"Right." Jason says, more like he's trying to reassure himself than calm the two of them down. Without another word, he takes a seat on the floor between Damian and Tim, and they all wait for Cassandra and Stephanie to get back.

* * *

She must doze off before they do. When she wakes up, it is to the sound of Dick coughing so hard she thinks it must be tearing through his entire body, and she squints around through the haze of sleep to see that everyone has been forced to move away from the glass. _This has been going on for a while then_. Damian and Bruce are still in the cave, hunched together by the computer while Bruce furiously types away at something, but Tim and Jason have both apparently slunk off, and if Cass or Steph were ever here there's no evidence of it. Alfred plainly was, a plate of cookies left on a table nearby with a few noticeably missing. Her temptation to go grab one is easily beaten by her desire to stay as close to Dick as she is allowed, looking longingly at him through the glass.

"It'll be okay," he reassures when he notices her staring. He stands and pads over to the glass, pressing a hand to it even as he must know she can't press back. She wants to so badly. "I haven't died yet. I'm like, the one Robin who hasn't. That's gotta mean something." She laughs even though it almost hurts to do so. It's more of a fond huff, really, and then she sniffs. It's the sort of sad and bitter humor one expects to hear from Jason over the comms, and not at all like the sort of joke Dick would tell. She glances over in time to see him press his forehead to the glass. "I love you."

"I love you too," she responds, instantly and trying not to let her pain or worry seep into her voice. After a moment, he returns to the bed. She can see in the way he fiddles with his thumbs how much he hates having nothing to do but lay around. "I'll see if I can smuggle you some weights when Bruce isn't looking... so you don't have to be so bored," she whispers, eyes sliding to the brooding man across the cave. _He can replace them after this is over_ , she thinks. By the time she looks back at Dick, he's smiling and half-asleep again already.

 _It'll be okay_ , she repeats to herself, because somebody has to.

 _I love you so much, you stupid man_.

* * *

Two days seem to come and go, all blurring together in the stress of Dick being stuck in bed, and he only gets worse as time passes. Eventually, Cass and Steph basically drag her out of the cave, forcing her to see daylight-- or really anything at all other than Dick laying in bed and coughing until his throat is so raw that he starts to cough blood into the plain white sheets in his little quarantined area of the Batcave. "Eat. Get some rest. Then come back," Cass says sternly. She sounds more like a parent than she has any right to, but Barbara reluctantly agrees to go upstairs with them into the manor anyway.

Tim is on the couch, his legs curled up underneath him and Titus laying next to him, chin on his knees. There's a blanket draped over his shoulders, and from the way it rests against the back of the couch, it looks like someone was sitting on his other side. Stephanie takes the space shortly after they get upstairs, and Cassandra sits on the armrest next to her. "We're watching a movie," Steph says. "Alfred's making some popcorn. You wanna join us for a little while?" _No_ , she thinks. _I want to go check on my husband and make sure he's not choking on his own blood from how hard he's coughing_.

Something about their faces makes it hard to say no, though, and so she wheels herself over and then slides into a spot on the opposite end of the couch from the three of them, pulling her legs up to hold her knees to her chest.

It turns out to be one of the Star Wars prequels, and she lets her mind drift away from Dick for a little while to make commentary on the terrible CGI, and it becomes a sort of battle of Barbara and Tim, who complain the entire time about how obviously bad the movie is, against Steph and Cass, who argue that it's obviously _so bad it's good_. "So bad it's good isn't real," Tim scoffs. "If it was, there would be no bad movies at all. It would be madness."

"Well maybe there are no bad movies at all!" Stephanie argues indignantly, and Cass nods at her side. The three of them have watched movies together that she knows would crush that argument in an instant.

"What about the _50 Shades_ movies?"

"Okay, those are _so_ different." They can't even hear the movie anymore as Stephanie starts to loudly rant about how awful that series as a whole is, and how the one thing they were supposed to be good for-- kinky sex scenes-- couldn't even be done right. Of course, Bruce happens to be walking through the room to go back downstairs at that exact second, and he comments that the movies weren't only supposed to be good for the kinky sex scenes, and this draws him into the argument as they all immediately say that _of course_ that's all those movies are supposed to be good for.

It does an excellent job of taking her mind off of Dick for a couple of hours. She hardly even remembers that he could be dying downstairs until Stephanie says that at the romance between Padmé and Anakin is almost cute with how cheesy it is after she and Tim point out how forced it seems, and she says that it's the sort of argument Dick would make. "The both of you are such hopeless romantics. Relationships in the real world don't look like that. Nine and fourteen and hardly knowing each other to married with twins on the way?" She rolls her eyes fondly. _I don't know what I'll do if this is twins_. It is sudden and intrusive and she immediately tenses. Everyone else seems to sense it, too, because they immediately stop arguing.

"Hey, it's okay," Tim murmurs, bumping her shoulder with his, and she shakes her head. "Well, it _will be_ okay. Just... why don't you go check on him, yeah? It's been a little while anyway. He probably wouldn't mind the company."

"He's... probably sleeping," Cass says, likely without thinking, and Stephanie elbows her so hard in reprimand that she nearly falls off the arm of the couch. Barbara ignores them after that in favor of going back down to the Batcave. Dick is curled up in his bed, shaking, and her heart breaks a little. _He's scared_ , she thinks. _He's scared and he's been putting up a front this whole time for me_. She wordlessly moves to sit with him and tells herself that she won't leave him again.

* * *

"Babs?" Dick croaks, and she looks over immediately. "Have you been with me this whole time?"

She wonders how long he's been in and out that he can't remember that she's only left his side the once. "Yeah, baby. I've been here this whole time."

His expression shifts in a weird way and he rolls to lay on his back, pulling the blanket a little tighter around him. "You promise you won't leave?" He sounds afraid, in a way, and she wants to know what's going through his head right now but at the same time she really doesn't. She opens her mouth to promise him that she won't, anyway, but he adds before she can, "I just... I want you to be here. If I... y'know."

"You're _not_ going to die," she insists. "I won't let you. If you die, I'll make Damian take me to a Lazarus pit I can dunk you in just so I can kill you myself for it. It's the only way you're allowed to go." She doubts this actually helps him to feel better at all, but she doesn't know what else to do. He lets out a weak chuckle anyway, likely laughing more at the nature of the comment than the comment itself. Laughing at how her it must feel.

He starts another coughing fit in the middle, wheezing for air between hacks. She wants nothing more than to be with him, rubbing his back until he stops coughing and pulling the blanket tighter around him and holding him. She wants to be by his side even if he _is_ going to die (which he's not) or at least to be in the same _room_ as him because being separated from him by glass like this is so much more painful than getting sick would be.

They sit in silence for another long while. "Babs?" He says, voice so light-- too light. It's like he's half asleep, and she hates it. She hates it because she knows that if he succumbs to it and goes to sleep this time, he will not wake up. He will simply lay there, so perfect and fragile-looking, and she can't stand to see it in her mind, let alone in the real world in front of her, so she squeezes her eyes shut when she asks him what he wants. "Tell me something secret."

"Something secret?" He hums, and she bites her lip. "I don't have anything secret, Dick."

"You're Oracle," he says, coughing out a laugh. "You're the leader of the Birds of Prey. You have the entire Justice League in your back pocket and you have every member of Batman's family on speed dial. You have metahuman contacts in every city in the US, and probably some outside of it. You probably know the secret identity of everyone on Earth. You've got tons of secrets." He sounds half-delirious. Like he's rambling just to fill the air between them because he doesn't know what else to do. She thinks that if he gets any sicker then she'll have to be the one to do it, and she's scared because she doesn't know how.

She sinks back in her chair, her hands moving to her still-flat stomach. "If I tell you this secret, you have to promise me that you're not going to let this thing beat you." She looks over to where he lays in his bed, completely unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his chest in time with his shallow breaths. "Dick? I mean it. The second you know this, you aren't allowed to die."

 _You aren't allowed to die because I can't do this by myself. You aren't allowed to die because_ I don't want to _._ Slowly, he lifts his head to look at her. They make eye contact, watery blue behind half-lidded eyes meeting sharp green that almost seems to dull from exhaustion. He nods his promise, watching her carefully. The air around them has shifted and even through the glass, he can feel it. "You aren't allowed to die because you have to meet your first child."

He nearly falls out of the bed, and as though there isn't glass between them, she leans forward to catch him, nearly falling out of her chair as she does. "My what? Babs!" He sounds excited and... horrified. _About the reaction I was expecting_. "This isn't fair! I can't hug you."

She laughs, wiping at her eyes even before they start to water. "How do you think I feel? You've been on the other side of this glass for half a week." He stands and walks over to the wall, crouching and pressing his hand against it, level to her abdomen. She wants to push herself closer to it so he can touch it even through the barrier but is sure that the moment she did would be the moment Bruce or Alfred came downstairs. "I wanted to wait to tell you until you were better. I didn't want you to find out... like this." _But now it's all too possible you won't get better and I can't bear the thought that you might never have known_.

"I'm going to get better," he says as though reading her mind. Their eyes meet again and she wants to believe him. "I'm going to get better." She trusts him to keep his word even as they both know that it's not the sort of thing he can control. As if on cue, he starts another coughing fit. It shakes his body so hard he drops to his knees and she reaches her hand out, fingertips hardly an inch away from the glass, everything in her screaming to reach out to him. She wants to take his hand. To comfort him. Instead, she can only hold her hand halfway between them, waiting for him to get better so she may finally be able to grab it.

* * *

She waits for a miracle that doesn't come.

Logically, she of course knew that telling him she was pregnant wasn't going to be some magical cure-all that immediately ended his sickness. She had hoped, though, that he would somehow get better after hearing it. He'd... fight harder, or something, even if that's not how sickness really works. Instead, his condition only seems to worsen over the next few days. No matter how much he struggles to come sit by her and whatever other visitors stay in the cave with them, he eventually loses the strength to even get out of bed to join her by the glass.

It hurts her to just sit there watching him in bed, coughing up a lung without the ability to do anything about it. It hurts her to tear her eyes away only to see Damian, sitting inches from the glass and staring at his dying older brother with wide eyes and pretending that he's not concerned even as she can see how red his eyes are from crying when nobody was looking. It hurts to notice more and more that Bruce can't even come into the cave, cannot bear to see yet another one of his children die right in front of him when he can't do anything to stop it.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" Jason asks, suddenly right next to her, and she jumps. It's the middle of the night, and she and Dick have been alone down here for hours. He is asleep, his breathing too shallow, and she's terrified that the moment she looks away, it's going to stop. As such, she cannot even tear her eyes away from him to answer Jason, instead hoping that the direction she stares in will be answer enough.

Apparently, it is. "That's what we're all thinking about," he sighs. He sounds like he was hoping she would say something else. "Lucius says that the guys at Wayne have been working day and night to find a medication for it, but it's looking like it's going to be a couple more weeks before they have anything solid. Could even be months." _He doesn't have that long_ , she thinks, but she can't say it out loud.

"We'll figure it out," she says instead. _We have to_. Jason nods without saying anything, hearing the hidden meaning in her words even if he can't hear the reasoning, and they continue to sit there just existing next to each other.

Slowly, the other members of the family continue to trickle in around them. Tim is first, sliding in without a word only an hour later, mug of black coffee in hand. Damian tries to creep in a little while after him before apparently noticing everyone else there and then he simply accepts that he's been spotted and sits with the rest of them, knees to his chest. He stares at Dick with more worry than anyone else, and she thinks she can understand. Dick was the first real bond he made within the family. Losing it is like losing his connection to the rest of them, on a level. Cass actually does sneak in, appearing at some point without any of them noticing. She's always been good at that. Stephanie comes down a little while later, sitting on the floor next to Tim and stealing his mug to take a huge gulp of the bitter coffee inside even as she has always been the sort to smother coffee with cream and sugar. It says a lot about how concerned he is that he doesn't even complain, simply holds his hand to take the mug back when she's had as much as she wants. Alfred comes down later to bring everyone food and coffee, and he simply doesn't go back upstairs, lingering nearby under the pretense of cleaning.

It seems like they're all down there for hours before Bruce finally joins them, bags under his eyes. Just looking at him she'd guess he hasn't slept in days. He's simply been locked up in his room, worrying that his son is dead downstairs and he hasn't even found him yet. She supposes his anxiety must have finally won out. "How is he doing?" He asks, forcing his voice to sound less stressed than he likely feels. He doesn't do a very good job of it.

"He's still alive," Jason reassures, the only one of them who's been up for talking since the rest of them all came down. "He's... sleeping a lot, but he's not dead." Something in Bruce's face drops as he nods. It looks like he's almost accepting defeat, and it's not the Bruce she knows and that terrifies her even more. "The fact that he's resting is good, though, right?" Jason says, apparently noticing how grim everyone else looks.

"Right," she says. She does not feel as hopeful as she tries to sound. They all look at Dick as though hoping he will wake up on cue. He simply rolls over in the bed, burying his face further in the single pillow despite the small blood stains from his coughs. She actually winces. _You promised me you were going to get better_. She thinks that if she were not too exhausted for tears she would be crying again. _You promised me that you were going to make it through this to meet our child. You have to meet them_. Bruce rests a hand on her shoulder.

* * *

It's one of the few times that he is awake and lucid, and he sits with one of his cheeks against the glass. She thinks he likes the cold of it against his cheeks. "If I die and you have a boy, please don't name him Richard." She wants to snap again that he is not going to die but is afraid of sounding like a broken record. "Name him after my dad. Or... or your dad." He coughs, and she holds her breath, waiting for it to become a fit. It does not, and he wipes weakly at his mouth. "One of my brothers..." He mumbles.

"Jason," she suggests. He hums in thought. "He's been really worried about you, you know? He doesn't show it as much as Tim or Damian, but... I think seeing you like this is really driving him crazy." He's started to contact vigilantes outside of Gotham about it, practically begging them for any knowledge they might have. "Jason Grayson. It rhymes."

"Grayson-Gordon," he corrects instantly, and she smiles softly.

"Right," she says.

He sighs, shaky and pained, and the effort it seems to take on him makes her grimace. "I like Wallace for a middle name. Y'know, after Wally... Jason Wallace Grayson-Gordon." _Sounds like a television personality. Some sort of late night host..._ She nods a little, even as he isn't looking at her. "Or maybe Bruce. But I guess Jason would throw a fit if his name was on the same baby as Bruce's..." He trails off. She doesn't think Jason Bruce sounds quite as nice, anyway.

"What about for a girl?" She asks, mostly because she wants to hear his voice when his throat is not too hoarse to use it.

"Mary," he says, like he's been thinking about it his entire life. _After his mother_ , she thinks, and her heart breaks for him a little. "If we have a daughter, I want her to be smart and kindhearted like my mother. And like hers." _With a father like you? She'll be the most smart and kindhearted little girl in the world_ _. Even if..._ She cannot bear to finish the thought. "If she ever gets married, I want Bruce to walk her down the aisle. If I die. She'll be his granddaughter..." _You promised me you wouldn't die. You're going to be the one to walk her down the aisle one day_.

He leans his head back against the glass and she wants nothing more than to run her fingers through his hair. "So Jason Wallace for a boy, and Mary for a girl... I like Kory for a middle name. Do you think she'd be upset?" He shakes his head. Dick and Kory broke up years ago, but things didn't end badly between them. _She was one of the bridesmaids at our wedding_. "Maybe Cassandra... or Martha. Mary Martha is very Irish," she comments absentmindedly. It occurs to her that she's just killing time until he falls asleep again, back and head pressed up against the glass. She sighs. "We'll have plenty of time to come up with a full name later, once you're feeling better." He nods tiredly, and she watches him helplessly while he falls asleep, unsure what else she can say.

* * *

She throws up for the first time at eight and a half weeks while Dick is on the other side of glass, and everyone starts panicking immediately. Though he has not thrown up once, they all seem to think she's contracted the virus. "You can't both be sick. You _can't_ ," Tim says, talking too fast like he does when he's nervous or excited. "You're the oldest. I don't know what any of us are going to do without you."

"I'm not sick," she says slowly. "Alfred, could you get me some water?"

He peels away from them to go back to the manor proper to fetch her a glass. "How do you know? Different symptoms manifest in different patients all of the time."

She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. "It'd be best to take you back to Leslie's clinic to be tested again. With how much time you've been spending down here, we can't rule anything out," Bruce says. He doesn't sound much less panicked than Tim, just like he knows how to hide it better.

"I'm _not_ sick," she says again, glaring around at the rest of them. The commotion is going to wake Dick up. "Vomiting isn't even one of the symptoms we've observed. Stop panicking, all of you." She can't force her tone to be quite as authoritative as usual with how exhausted she is, but it still has the desired effect, the lot of them snapping their mouths shut. "I know that I'm not sick because..." She slides her eyes to Dick. She was hoping that he would be awake when she told everyone else in the family. _I was hoping that he wouldn't be sick by the time we were telling everyone else_. "I'm pregnant."

It seems as though time stops. Everyone in the room around her freezes, and for a single nerve-wracking second it seems as though even Dick has stopped breathing. Then he inhales deeply in his sleep and the family all seems to come back to life, everyone rushing forward and pushing each other out of the way to hug her, Dick's condition momentarily forgotten in the wake of this new revelation. She can't help but feel just a little bit bitter about it. _I refuse to let this new family member replace any of the old_. Stephanie is the first one to get to her, squeezing her so hard she wheezes.

"I'm going to be an aunt!" She squeals. When she lets go of Barbara it is to kneel down in front of her and press her face up close to her stomach. "We're going to spoil you so much," she murmurs, though she surely must know that the baby can't hear her yet. "I'm your Aunt Stephanie and I'm going to be your favorite," she adds, and this is when Damian finally elbows her out of the way. For a long time, he doesn't say anything at all, simply stares at her stomach with narrowed eyes. She wonders if he's ever considered Dick having children before, whether that be with her or with anyone else. She supposes he must have always thought that he was enough for Dick to handle, which is... probably true, actually.

"You haven't been sleeping enough for a woman with child," he says eventually, finally ripping his eyes away from her abdomen to look her in the face. She blinks in surprise. "Like a sick person, you need a lot of rest to properly nourish your growing fetus. I won't have my niece or nephew suffering before they're even born and have to deal with Grayson's awful puns." She scoffs a laugh and hooks an arm around his neck, dragging him in to ruffle his hair. _Didn't know you were such a pregnancy expert, kiddo_ , she thinks, but she doesn't say it because there are too many people around and she doesn't want to embarrass him too much.

While he struggles in her grip, Cass steps up next to him. "Does... Dick know?"

She pauses to look at her in surprise, and Damian uses the opportunity to slip away, sulking in Bruce's general direction. "Yeah, he knows. I didn't want to tell any of you, not even Dick, until he was better, but..." _But I couldn't risk him never knowing about his child_.

"He will get better," she says, sounding more sure than she has in days. "For... him or her. For... both of you." She nods, and holds her arms out for a hug. Cass leans in, wrapping her arms around her, and it is loose and perhaps a little bit awkward but it is still perfect. When they've pulled apart, Alfred is finally back with her water. The taste has mostly left her mouth by now, but she downs half the glass anyway.

"If I might, I think Alfred is a wonderful name for a boy," he jokes. She laughs, reaching up to hug him. "Congratulations to the both of you. Your child will surely be the most spoiled member of this family yet." He murmurs low in her ear, holding her tight. _Is that even possible?_ She thinks. With how many pets Damian has been allowed to collect, she thinks her child will have to own an entire zoo to be more spoiled than him. Then again, she wouldn't put it past Bruce.

Speaking of Bruce, he still stands off to the side, looking absolutely stunned. His eyes are the only part of him that moves, and they slide between her and where Dick lays. He doesn't say anything as Tim spends a full five minutes interrogating her about if they're going to be moving into the manor (she'd rather die), and if they're going to tell they're kid about their lives as vigilantes (they haven't talked about it), and how long they've known (not long).

"I'm going to be a grandfather?" It is abrupt and she is thankful for the interruption, as everyone turns to look at him and for just a moment the attention in the room is finally off of her. If Damian thought that he was always going to be the baby of the family, somehow it seems like Bruce thought even less that he would ever have grandchildren. _How he could possibly think that, I have no idea_.

"Yeah. You're going to be a grandfather."

* * *

For the next few days, they make it a point to drag her away from Dick's side every night and make her sleep in a proper bed rather than passing out in her chair like she has been doing. "It can't be good for your back to stay like that," Stephanie says, hands on her hips, and she's _right_ of course, but Barbara still doesn't want to leave him. She doesn't understand why her back suddenly matters so much more now that she is having a baby. _Maybe they've been worried this whole time, and this is just the excuse they needed_ , something in the back of her brain offers, and she scowls at the thought because she knows it is most certainly right.

Alfred makes her favorite foods and half of them make her feel sick to her stomach while the other half make her mouth water at the thought of having more. He also fights her away from coffee and he is perhaps the only person on this planet who could. "I'll bring you some peppermint tea to relax," he tells her while shooing her out of the kitchen, and she grumbles that she doesn't _want_ to relax, she wants to stay up for another hour so she can sit at her husband's side and worry that he's going to die like a healthy pregnant woman obviously does.

"Your family is driving me insane," she groans when she is finally allowed to return to the cave, and he cracks open an eye to look at her, raising an eyebrow as best he can. "I swear I would drink _decaf_ at this point if it meant I could have coffee."

"Don't say that, Alfie'll hear you," he jokes. She rolls her eyes. "They're your family, too. And I can't believe you told them without me!" _It's not exactly like I had a choice_ , she thinks. There isn't a single member of the extended Wayne family who isn't nosier than a private detective, which she supposes makes sense, but it's still annoying. As much as she'd have loved to keep her pregnancy a secret until she was showing and someone inevitably made a comment on her weight just to get her to snap so they'd finally know what was really going on, the threat of being quarantined for an illness she doesn't have is too much to deal with. She is hardly dealing with being separated from Dick as it stands, let alone if she was behind glass, too.

She rests her hands on her still-flat belly, staring down at it. "I don't think any of this is exactly under ideal circumstances, Dick. I _wish_ I had been able to tell you in the Clocktower and feel your arms around me while you cried about how you were going to be a dad. I wish we could have brought a camera and filmed when I was telling the whole family and actually caught Bruce's _face_ when he learned that I was pregnant with his first grandchild. I wish that anything was happening but what actually is. This is what we've been dealt, though."

He sighs and drops his head forward against the glass with a soft thump. "I know. It just sucks."

"Oliver has something!" Jason screams so loudly that she is worried for a moment it will wake the bats. She cannot even jump at his sudden presence anymore, so used to other members of the family bursting into the cave whenever they want now that she's announced her pregnancy. She supposes it isn't actually _her_ cave, so she can't be too upset about it. "Oliver's seen something like this before... It's not exact, but it's close enough he might be able to help," he pants, having sprinted over to them from the entrance to the Batcave by now. "I was asking everyone I could think of in the Justice League... Clark, Diana, Dinah, J'onn, even fucking Hal! And none of them had any clue. Finally _Roy_ tells me that he and Oliver dealt with something like this years ago and Queen Industries still has some medication on hand." He looks at Dick, his face softening somewhat. "You're gonna be okay."

She and Dick both stare at him for a minute, absolutely dumbfounded, and then look at each other. She thinks that she has cried all of the tears she is able in the last two weeks, but she can see them streaming down his face and she wants to kiss him. "You're gonna be okay," she echoes, voice barely above a breath. Her hands fall to her abdomen again, cradling the still-forming fetus inside. _You're gonna get to meet your dad_... Jason squeezes her shoulder and leaves them alone together, saying he's going to tell Bruce and scrambling off upstairs.

* * *

Oliver and Dinah land in Gotham two days later and Barbara is with Alfred and Bruce to pick them up at the airport, impatient to get her hands on the thing that might save her husband's life. She hardly even greets Dinah in her rush to interrogate Oliver about it. "How fast will it work?" She questions, gesturing at the briefcase in his hands.

"Slow down there, spitfire. We can't be positive it will work at all. This is just... it's the best chance we've got, okay?" Dinah says it with a tone as though she doesn't expect it to work at all. _It has to_ , she thinks defiantly. _Because it's our only shot_.

The ride back to the manor is painfully silent.

* * *

Everyone is waiting downstairs by the time that they get back, crowded around Dick's glass enclosure like he's some sort of zoo animal. He hardly seems to mind, sitting on the floor in front of the glass divider with his legs crossed and his forehead pressed forward against the glass. "I'm gonna die in here while they're gone," he groans miserably. "They're gonna be halfway back from the airport and I'm gonna die in here."

Damian's fists clench at his sides. Tim stares at his feet sadly, looking somewhat resigned to what Dick is saying. Jason looks angriest, arms crossed tightly over his chest and glaring at his brother. "Stop saying that. Oliver is on his way with medicine. You're going to get help. Just hold out a little longer."

"Or don't," Oliver says, announcing their presence before the argument has a chance to escalate. She thinks with how tired everyone has been the last few weeks, nobody would have the energy to escalate it anyway. Everyone whips around to face the lot of them, Dick springing up to his feet before a coughing fit forces him to double over and brace himself with a fist against the glass. "Hey, buddy. It's gonna be okay."

"Oliver," Dick wheezes, straightening. "Dinah. You guys are here early." Barbara doesn't point out that their plane was due to land an hour ago, or that it landed early because a rich man on a mission has a lot of influence, or that even _Alfred_ was driving like a maniac to ensure his eldest grandson wasn't going to die. _To ensure that his eldest grandson could meet_ his _eldest child_.

Damian practically shoves a surgical mask into Oliver's hands and then starts physically pushing him to Dick's little quarantined room. Jason stands off to the side, arms still crossed, giving Damian a more approving look than she's seen him wear since he came back to life. No one questions it when Alfred slides over and gives Barbara a surgical mask even as everyone else has to get their own. Tim is the one to open the door with gloved hands, unsealing the area for the first time since they were all checked for the illness weeks ago. It feels like it's been months.

She wishes Dick would come stumbling out. Wishes he could step out and she could hold his hand while he took whatever medicine he's about to be given.

Instead, Oliver crosses the boundary of the room and opens his briefcase, and Tim closes the door behind him, sliding to the floor and pressing as close to the glass as he can get without actually touching his nose to it. Dick sits on the bed, forcing himself to stare down at his hands so he won't try to peer nervously over Oliver's shoulder. Barbara, though, can see Oliver pluck out a little syringe with peach-colored fluid inside.

"Can I tell you a secret?" He says, sliding over to Dick and not making any attempt to keep his voice from carrying. Dick nods weakly, sniffling and then lifting his head to look Oliver in the face. "You were always my favorite of Bruce's kids. I remember watching you bounce all over the place with so much energy and excitement. The first kid to put on the Robin suit. The first kid to be a companion to any of us."

Dick stares at him with wide eyes, and she can see the disappointed looks on all of the boys' faces (Cass is, of course, too stoic, and Stephanie doesn't consider herself one of Bruce's kids, anyway) before Oliver stabs the needle into Dick's arm. _He was just trying to distract him from the shot_ , she thinks. _No one would actually admit who their favorite of their friend's kids is_.

She tries not to wince as Oliver presses on the piston of the syringe, murmuring to Dick to keep him distracted, but she can still see the pain on her husband's face as he hisses through his teeth even if she cannot actually hear any noise escaping him. When it is firmly emptied, he pulls the needle from his arm and pulls a bandaid seemingly from nowhere, pressing it over the prick. "You okay?" Dick hesitates a moment and then nods, and she hadn't even noticed his white-knuckled grip of his sheets until he was peeling his hands away, too busy watching the syringe empty into his arm. "You should be good to leave this room in three days. It'll be like getting over a cold for the next week or so, but then you're good. If there's any complications, you _call me or Dinah_ , okay? We needed to come to Gotham for something anyway, so we'll be here for a little while."

* * *

"Is this your first time leaving the manor other than getting us at the airport since Dick got sick?" Dinah says without looking away, hands pressed firmly into her pockets, and Oliver glances over his shoulder at her before jumping like he hadn't noticed her.

She takes a deep breath of the crisp, earthy spring air. It's early June, but the sun is barely up. "Yeah," she answers honestly. She pushes herself forward to join them, right between the two of them. _Lawrence Lance. Loyal officer. Doting husband and father. He was loved until the end._ _Dinah Drake Lance. She looked Death in the face and told him she was driving._ "Is it that time of year already?" She doesn't want to talk about herself. She doesn't want to talk about herself or her sick husband or his several siblings gathered around his room praying to gods they may or may not believe in that he'll be alright.

"One of 'em," Dinah offers. She looks at Barbara sadly. "I remember finding out my mom was sick. Dad had been gone for a few months, and we were fighting all of the time, and she calls me up and tells me that she loves me, and I immediately know something is wrong. I was in denial for _months_ , screamed at her that I wasn't gonna let her drag me back in so easily. So she just let me hang up the phone. And we didn't talk again until she was on her deathbed. And we made up, and then she was... she was just gone." Oliver reaches around behind Barbara to squeeze Dinah's hand before she has a chance to lift her own.

"At least you didn't have to watch her wither away in a hospital bed," Barbara offers, bad at emotional advice and worse at controlling her own emotions about the position she has been stuck in with Dick for weeks now. Dinah knows her well enough not to hold it against her, simply gives her a sympathetic look and takes her hand from Oliver to squeeze her shoulder.

They all stay there in silence for a long time, staring at two headstones that shouldn't have to be here. The headstones of two people who died too young and left a 21-year-old daughter behind all by herself. _At least she handled herself well_ , Barbara tries to assure herself. _At least she got to know them at all_ , another bitter part of her screams. _At least there was never a risk of an infant losing her father before she ever got to know him_.

"The both of you are too amazing to die," Oliver says, startling her out of her thoughts. It's been quiet for too long and she's let herself get lost in the ghosts that fill this place. The Gotham Cemetery is too dark a place, and everywhere she looks she sees loved ones she never got to meet. "You and Dick. You're both too amazing and too stubborn. He'll beat this thing just to come see you at the end of it. That'd be true even if we didn't get here when we did." He smiles at her, and to his credit, it is somewhat reassuring. "You should head back to the manor. Be with your husband. We'll all get together after."

* * *

She wakes up to her shoulder being tapped and startles, immediately grabbing the wrist of whoever is touching her.

She looks up and almost cries to see it is Dick, still wearing stained pajamas and looking like he hasn't slept properly in weeks, but no longer looking so ghostly pale. She throws her arms around his shoulders, uses his body as a brace to drag herself up and buries her face in his shoulder, almost sobbing. He wraps his arms around her waist in return, burying his nose in her hair and whispering sweet nothings that she cannot hear over the thoughts racing through her own head. It is like a buzzing white noise of relief and happiness and excitement and boy is she getting dizzy but she _doesn't care_.

"Babs," he says, and it is more like a hoarse whisper than the pained croaking that he has been doing the past several weeks. She's crying now, she can feel it, but she just lets out soft little sobs of relief into his shoulder. _He's okay. He's okay he's okay he's okay._ He's talking but she can't make out a word he is saying. It doesn't matter, as it's hardly another minute before one of his brothers wanders down and sees him, and then it is all a blur as everyone begins to fill the cave and they're completely surrounded by family and he's _fine_. "I'm okay," he breathes.

"I love you so much, you stupid man."


End file.
